Balinese villagers patronize market stalls, warungs, and mobile
carts from early morning to late at night to gorge on exotic
desserts masquerading as between-meal-snacks and seductive
tropical breakfasts. Sweet sumping waluh (steamed pumpkin
cake) and sumping nangka (steamed jackfruit cake) glisten
with coconut milk, rice flour, sugar, and a slice of fruit
wedged into a sharply cut, folded, oval banana-leaf wallet.
(The banana leaf protects its own secret offspring-a concealed
coin of steamed banana interred deep into the heart of the
dense, sticky dough). Gluey sago pudding, or bubur sagu,
(soft sago pearls, palm sugar syrup, coconut milk, and pandanus
leaves), and jaja batun bedil (small, sticky rice and tapioca
flour dumpling balls boiled and drenched in a brown palm sugar
syrup, pandanus leaf, and coconut milk sauce) are island favorites.
Sweet, creamy, green bubuh kacang hijau (mung bean pudding)
boasts boiled mung beans, ginger, sweet coconut cream, vanilla,
sticky white rice, and brown sugar flavored with extract of
kneaded kayu sughi leaves (a common Balinese plant).
Nutritious and nutty, it is cooked as a home snack (with condensed
milk poured over the top), ladled out as a “sick bed”
porridge, or inexpensively served prêt a porter in plastic
and ice (es bubuh kacang hijau) by compound-visiting, push
cart vendors.
Jaja—an endless, generic variation on a theme--embraces
over sixty different kinds, shapes, and colors of (handmade
or mass-produced) Balinese rice cakes sold at every warung
and mini-mart in every village on Bali. Jaja are made
out of three basic ingredients—sticky, glutinous, or
plain rice flour dough, coconut, and palm sugar—lovingly
steamed, baked, boiled, or fried and individually wrapped
in pliable pieces of banana leaf. (Banana leaves moonlight
as conical or cylindrical jaja moulds, carefully peeled off
when stuffed to capacity.) Adorned with grated coconut,
fresh fruits, palm sugar syrup, pandanus leaves (and hidden
surprise bean treats), jaja are always eaten with the fingers.
Wajik (a glutinous rice flour cake wedge with pandanus
and palm sugar) competes for favor with kelepon (a small,
olive dough ball dyed with green leaf juice, packing a soft,
juicy palm syrup center). Jaja laklak (mini-pancakes)
are baked in a Dutch stovetop poffertjes pan: the batter is
poured into shallow, round, two-inch wide wells and then injected
with sweet interior fillings. Cubed, triangular, or
round jaja abug commands attention with alternating, red and
white sticky rice layers (made for both Balinese ritual ceremonies
and everyday secular delectation). Jaja lapis are layered
in a labyrinth rainbow of colors, while bulung is a brown,
jelly-like cake made from dried seaweed containing gelatinous,
solidifying agar-agar (an East Indian moss). Steamed
cerorot (a specialty of the Bali Aga village of Tenganan)
is made of rice flour, brown sugar, and salt, twisted in a
loose, coconut leaf horn of plenty roll.
Ceremonial jaja pleases the palates of the Hindu gods at temple
anniversaries, toothfilings, and weddings—fashioned
from stuck-together, glutinous rice grains or steamed, sticky,
glutinous rice dough instead of normal, rice flour jaja base.
Jaja offerings are incorporated into enormous, layered, six-foot-tall,
highly decorated ceremonial offering towers (banten tegeh)
of mangosteen, snakeskin fruit, mangoes, apple, meat, grilled
chicken, eggs, and fluorescent pink and green cakes affixed
with bamboo sticks to a central, banana stem support stand.
Built to honor the gods, these colorful, pagoda-like pyramids
are borne on the heads of spectacularly costumed village women
in single file street processions to local temples.
Blessed by the priest, sprinkled with holy water, and accepted
by the deities, cake for the gods is infused with a new sacred
energy; the bountiful skyscrapers are re-convoyed home to
be consumed by the family.
The Balinese artistically—and reverentially—etch
fresh rice dough into brilliantly colored (with commercial
food dyes) faces and figures representing the deities.
Round, candy apple red jaja matanai (“suncake”)
is an arresting visual prayer--fried and cut out to resemble
the sun. Spectacular, hard-fried, colored rice dough
cookies (and small fried rice cakes in pink, yellow, orange,
and green) are attached to a three-meter-high bamboo and cloth
framework positioned by the central shrine during temple odalan
celebrations. Painstakingly decorated with hundreds
of different sculptured figures, these sarad offering constructions
symbolically depict the entire Balinese religious universe
(the earth balanced on the back of the cosmic turtle, supported
by the dragon, and surrounded by the skies and heaven).
Sarad are never eaten because they remain on display in the
temple for many days. Hand-made, time-consuming, sweet
ceremonial masterpieces are increasingly manufactured by professionals.
Local female offerings specialists (tukang banten) produce
the ritual jaja cakes, imposing offering towers, and divinely
ornate, meticulously crafted high offerings required for mass
celebrations: a roster of over one hundred different offering
designs feeds the rich and continual ceremonial needs and
life of the devout people of Bali. Sacred jaja like
kue mangkok (small, hotly colored, tulip-shaped offering cakes)
fill the village market stalls before major religious holidays.
Popular, pillow-shaped jaja bantal (a piodalan ceremonial
offering), cloisters steamed, sticky rice, grated coconut,
and either bananas, fruits, peas, or small red beans in a
young coconut leaf
